“The service has been forced to make cuts year after year as a result of inadequate finance coming from the council.

“The situation has been gradually worsening for several years but has gathered speed in the last year since the council imposed a recruitment freeze.

“There simply aren’t enough firefighters in Surrey to crew the pumps, with the bare minimum of four people, let alone the five we should have on every pump, as pledged by the council in its 2011 Public Safety Plan.”

Overall, there were 29,932 times since December 2008 where fire engines were unavailable.

Back-up pump

Mr Jones said: “The crewing establishment in Surrey has been cut so deeply that pumps now have to come off the run in order for firefighters to be trained.

“To leave pumps with a crew of four is dangerous for firefighters as they don’t have enough crew members to safely commit to critical procedures like wearing breathing apparatus, which means they should wait for a back-up pump to arrive.

“How can we tell the public we cannot go into a burning building to make a rescue until the back-up arrives?

“This leads to crews taking huge risks with a crew of four, which is in total conflict with their training and the service’s procedures.

“It’s worth remembering that of the last 17 firefighter deaths in the UK, 11 were wearing breathing apparatus at the time they died.”

'Response maintained'

Councillor John Orrick, Liberal Democrat member for transport and environment at the county council, said: “I’m staggered. Even having a pump off line for as little as five minutes is riding their luck.

“What this means is that any extra call at that time can’t be covered.”

Cllr Kay Hammond, county council cabinet member for community safety, commented: "Each time a fire engine is refuelled, it is said to be off the run. The same goes for when a tyre needs changing or for when the water tanks need refilling after a fire.

"The majority of times a fire engine is off the run, it is for a few minutes and for day-to-day reasons like these. To suggest otherwise is wrong.

"To have a fire engine unavailable due to a whole time crew shortage is incredibly rare.

"It has happened less than 0.3% of the time this year and even when it does, there are plans in place to ensure response times are maintained.”